The thing about the day you die is it's just that; a day. Unless you wake up fully intending to take your life, you don't know it's going to happen that day. It's no different to any other day, if truth be told. And of course, when you die truth is all you have left. Everything you tried to hide when you were alive comes out when you die, but that's when it no longer matters. All those little crushes you had, the secrets you kept hidden under the mattress. All of it becomes known. But of course, it no longer matters. You no longer truly exist, and neither do your secrets.
The other thing about the day you die is that you just end. Everything about you that made you different from the seven billion other people on the planet just becomes nothing. Of course people like to spin yarns about the afterlife or reincarnation or something but…that's just a story people like to tell themselves to stave of the inevitable fear of oblivion. Everyone fears what comes after, even if they pretend to themselves and everyone around them that they're not. It's human nature, the survival instinct. No one likes to think of themselves as ending, becoming nothing. Just a husk, a shell of the person they once were. No life, no breath, no beating heart and pumping blood, no emotions, just flesh. Whoever you are, however grand you once were, however many heinous crimes you once committed you still become nothing, you still get buried or burnt like everyone else on this godforsaken planet.
It seemed incredible to Jeff how he could think all this in the hanging moment between life and death. When he could still sense his faintly beating heart fighting to keep him alive but could also smell the faint, murky scent of death. That was another thing he'd never known, that death had a peculiar smell. It was slightly enticing with a pinch of fear and a side of unknown.
Hours seemed to have passed since the blinding flash of the car's headlights had crashed into him, yet Jeff knew it must've been only seconds. Seconds since it had happened and seconds before it would all be over and he would be the nothing, follow everyone else to the inevitable end. Another voice crept into his jumbled thoughts, a voice that could possibly be the only thing to save him from nothing. Or at least, under other circumstances, this voice could save him from nothing. Not tonight. This voice sparked memories, memories of harsh voices and flying tempers.
He could hear the voice begging him to stay alive, to open his eyes, to do anything but leave him alone. The voice had no hold on him, Jeff was insistent that it wouldn't. It couldn't. The voice had left him, not the other way around. This was his revenge, the ultimate revenge even if he hadn't planned until seconds ago when blinding tears had replaced by blinding lights.
There was still something inside Jeff that was pleading with him to stay alive, to listen to the voice and LIVE. But he couldn't. The small thing inside him was slowly being quenched by the impending nothing that he could sense creeping up on him. Jeff almost wished he had some salt he could throw over his left shoulder to make the nothing just wait, he wasn't ready to go yet, fear and adrenaline and life was still coursing through his veins, surely that had to count for something.
That was the final thing about death: it didn't wait. Once death had you locked in its sight that was it. There was no hope, no 'just wait, I'm coming in a minute', no mercy |. Once death decided you were next, you truly were next. Death didn't care if the voice above you just wanted to apologise and you really wanted to hear what the voice had to say, you wanted to know why the voice had said what it had said before it left. That was irrelevant to death. Death didn't want the bits that made you you, that's why you became nothing. Death wanted you to become as nothing as death was.
The voice grew weaker and weaker as the end grew nearer and nearer until you weren't even sure if there was actually anyone there. The end was lonely, it was you doubting everything that had ever happened to yourself. For as loved as you were, the end journey is one you travel alone.
And so Jeff did, on that fateful night, under the stars that were crying as hard as the dark haired boy above him who pleaded with death to let him come too. Death didn't listen, he didn't care for love. He had his victim, now it was time to leave, pieces of a shattered heart lining the path behind him, mixing with all the other pieces of shattered hearts from all over the globe until you couldn't tell which bits came from the boy belonging to the voice. Death never looked back, and neither did Jeff.